The photographer, Han Youngsoo
©️Han Youngsoo, Han Youngsoo Foundation.
Modern Seoul, the Beauty of Korea Through Han Youngsoo
Heesum Tea Room is a space that reflects on how Korean beauty and spiritual culture can be carried forward in the language of today. In that process, it has felt natural to look toward other forms of art that share a similar sensibility with tea culture. Among them, one figure who has stayed with us for a long time is the Korean photographer Han Youngsoo.
What struck me when I first encountered his photographs was that, rather than emphasizing poverty or trauma of the era, he captured the refined and composed face of Seoul as a city. While many images explain their time through absence or tragedy, Han Youngsoo crosses time through everyday expressions and the quiet rhythm of the city. Even in black and white, the people and streets in his photographs feel surprisingly modern. They do not read as distant records of the past, but as scenes that could still be unfolding now. This comes not only from technical mastery, but from the sophistication of his gaze.
©️Han Youngsoo, Han Youngsoo Foundation.
Han Youngsoo’s photographs are clearly still. The frames are calm, without exaggerated movement, yet within them are subtle rhythms of walking, moments of pause, and the quiet tension of intersecting glances. Because of this, his images, though frozen, convey a vivid sense of time passing. He captures an instant, but it is not bound to a specific event. Instead, it remains as something almost timeless.
This is where the tea room feels a deep resonance. There is a shared strength in holding onto moments that are destined to disappear and allowing them to remain as a lasting sensation. An emotion and resonance that do not require explanation, yet arrive naturally. The Seoul in Han Youngsoo’s photographs does not feel like a city of the past, but like a Seoul that is still breathing somewhere, even now.
Through his work, the tea room is reminded that Korean aesthetics do not need to be heavy or dramatic. Within a quiet, restrained gaze, they can be fully modern and deeply layered. Though Han Youngsoo’s photography and the tea culture we pursue exist in different realms, we believe they speak to the same idea: a hidden dynamism within stillness, and the power for a fleeting moment to remain, almost as if it were eternal.
